Issue 17 Laughter Spring 2005

Artist Project / Even the Trees Would Leave

H. Lan Thao Lam and Lana Lin

August 23, 2008
She watches a special story, broadcast as part of the television coverage for the Olympics, detailing the history of golf. A Chinese professor asserts that golf can be traced back to as early as tenth-century China, though it is popularly thought to originate from Scotland. She examines a Ming dynasty treasure hanging in Beijing’s Palace Museum. The painting’s five elegantly dressed court women, playing what appears to be a game of golf, disproves the acronym Gentleman Only Ladies Forbidden. Chui (to hit, strike, or whack) Wan (ball) was apparently the Imperial Palace maids’ favorite past time. The painting looks easily as if it could have been altered. This would not be too far-fetched for her to imagine, given China’s ceaseless drive to claim the origins of practically every facet of civilization.

June 20, 2005
Her family convenes for a reunion on a Malaysian island hosted by Goodwill Ambassador Angelina Jolie. Any
site can become a tourist site, she thinks, any day a
commemoration.

January 17, 2004
Finals of the amateur Hole-in-One competition take place at Golf & Fun Driving Range, Whitehead, Hong Kong. A hole-in-one earns HK$1 million.1 She might also win a car. The publicity pamphlet asks: “Overwhelmed by routine? Longed for fresh air, sunshine, and getting some exercise? With magnificent ocean view, Golf & Fun is your place of desire.” Golf is not just an elegant sport to her. She practices her swing because it oils business relations.

December 26, 2003
She steps off the bus, and notices the sign: Pillar Point Refugee Camp. She is surprised that they have not changed the name of the bus stop, since the camp has been closed for several years. She ventures to the New Territories for “Sleepout Hong Kong” at River Trade Golf Driving Range and BBQ Centre, Tuen Mun. The Sleepout invites everyone to help needy children in China who have not had a chance to learn how to write their own names. “Build your own cardboard shelter. Enjoy the company of your friends and co-workers for one night. For HK$290, you will be provided with bread and water, so that you can experience the hardships that children in our Motherland face.”

October 8, 2003Entering the recreation site, she’s greeted by a towering golf ball at least two feet taller than she is. Cars pull in for the
preliminary rounds of the HK$1 million Hole-in-One shootout at Golf & Fun Driving Range, Whitehead. Had the Hole-in-One sponsors noticed the footprint left from a structure that was once called the biggest prison in the world?
An entrepreneur nabbed these vast unoccupied stretches of land with a lucrative business plan. At last,
Hong Kong reclaims its own land. Not long ago, no one
could bring sports equipment into these areas for fear that it would be turned into weapons; now even without a club membership, for HK$40 she can drive unlimited balls for half an hour. Nets as high as the former barbed wire fences
now restrain high-flying golf balls. She stares at the row
of golfers’ silhouettes that adorn the bathroom, monotone and unresisting. This is how they wanted the refugees—as mute and abiding as these painted figures. This is not the bathroom that served thousands of Vietnamese. It is air-conditioned, clean, too small.

July 28, 2001
She flips through a special issue of Refugees magazine
celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the United Nations Convention
on Human Rights. The black and white photo of the 1951 Geneva Refugee
Convention is typical of such legal ceremonies: nineteen men and three
women gather around a central figure putting weight into his official
stamp. This is the document that protected her sister when Vietnamese
were considered more desirable. Her brother was not as lucky.

June 20, 2001
The UN General Assembly adopts a resolution to celebrate World Refugee Day on June 20.

May 31, 2000
Hong Kong’s last Vietnamese refugee camp—Pillar Point Vietnamese
Refugees Centre, Tuen Mun—closes at midnight. She hears that there are
proposals to turn it into a crematorium, a theme park, or a botanical
garden. The last of the 230,000 Vietnamese that have passed through
Hong Kong are free to “stand on their own feet.”

March 3, 2000
She encounters the term “land reclamation” in the Hong Kong Museum of
History in an exhibit called “Hong Kong Story.” She reads about how
Hong Kong reclaims land for commercial use, and asks aloud, “reclaims
it from what?” In unison, an elderly, distinguished Asian couple
responds from across the hall: “from the sea.”

February 22, 2000
The Widened Local Resettlement Scheme is initiated, allowing 1400 VRs and VMs2
who have no prospects for acceptance elsewhere to apply for
resettlement in Hong Kong. Removal allowance ranges from HK$3,950 to
$11,410.

January 9, 1998
The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government abolishes the
“Port of First Asylum” policy. Vietnamese illegal arrivals after this
date are treated as illegal immigrants, as opposed to refugees.

July 1, 1997
The Government of the United Kingdom transfers sovereignty over Hong
Kong to the People’s Republic of China. This is also the deadline China
announces for the complete removal of VMs from Hong Kong.

January 3, 1997
In Calgary, Canada, she reads the headline: “Saga of Vietnamese Boat
People Nears End.” Whitehead Detention Centre, where she spent almost
twelve years of her life, closes. At the height of the refugee influx,
it contained 29,000 asylum-seekers.

May 10, 1996
Another massive riot breaks out at Whitehead in protest against forced
repatriation. Over 500 tear gas canisters are emptied. Fortunately,
some families had the idea of making gas masks out of knitted hoods
with plastic drink bottles cut out as visors.

February 3, 1994
President Clinton lifts the nineteen-year US trade embargo
on Vietnam.

November 1, 1991
As a result of the Orderly Repatriation Programme, her plastic shopping
bag is packed with clothes collected from donations. Some people dress
in their best clothes. Two days ago they wore the same outfits for
group photos. This time they didn’t smuggle the film out to be
developed. It will be done more cheaply in Vietnam. She waits with
fifty-nine others to be repatriated. At the airport, Hong Kong
Correctional Services Officers form a barricade lest anyone try to
escape. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees will give her
US$50 when she registers in Vietnam.

June 16, 1988
All VMs arriving in Hong Kong undergo mandatory screening to determine
whether they are genuine refugees or economic migrants. “Non-refugees”
are repatriated to Vietnam. She has managed to learn a little bit of
English, but they keep introducing new words. She cannot hear their
words. Encamped on an unused military airstrip, she hears only the roar
of jets flying overhead. Will she ever board one of them? Heading west
or east?

April 16, 1985
A volunteer lectures her on the competition for land in Hong Kong. To
these tiny 1100 square kilometers of land, crowded with 6.8 million
people, piled in high-rises standing on an artificial shoreline
fashioned out of rubbish and imported soil, thousands of Vietnamese
have fled. Hong Kong receives them under the “Port of First Asylum”
policy.

July 2, 1982
“Closed camps” are set up to deter more Vietnamese from flooding Hong
Kong like a wave. She must give up her job at the hotel and clean the
camp kitchen instead.

September 23, 1981
Grim faces greet the news that Hong Kong will no longer grant automatic
asylum. It is Wednesday and they dine on chicken wings as usual. This
morning her uncle was given his “first chicken wing”. In camp lingo
this means he will not fly to the West on a real jet wing; with chicken
wings one cannot fly. But he will appeal to the Refugee Status Review
Board. He has two more tries before he is sent back.

May 15, 1980
She squats in line with the others, a first of many lines: waiting to
identify herself, waiting for the bathroom, waiting for cans of beans,
instant noodles, and Tang. A well-known Vietnamese song is amplified
and distorted through loudspeakers: “Tomorrow you leave; the sea
remembers your name; calls it to return...” The song was banned both in
North and South Vietnam, but here it is played freely each time fellow
campmates leave for their new countries. When she hears it after
eighteen days at sea—her seventh attempt to flee—she could not hold
back her tears. The sea may remember her name, but on this land, she is
just one of thousands of boat people. In the sea, she had placed all
her hopes for an unknown future. From inside the camp, the sea is what
separates her from the free world.

April 30, 1976
For the first anniversary of the fall of Saigon, her father gives the
children a lesson on the Law of the Sea. Preparing to escape Vietnam,
they should know their rights. She likes the sound of “Eleanor of
Aquitaine”—the woman who brought admiralty law to England; its
syllables come out of her mouth like a poem. She wonders whether
Eleanor became interested in the law of the seas because her name
refers to water. Her sisters copy maps and flags of different countries
from the back of a Larousse French dictionary for their father to
navigate their journey.

May 4, 1975
The Communist takeover of the South precipitates a massive exodus from
Vietnam. Those departing tear away from their ancestral roots. People
say even the trees would leave if they could. The Danish container ship
Clara Maersk containing 3,743 Vietnamese refugees enters Hong Kong’s waters.

US $1 = HK $7.8

According to the Hong Kong government’s official acronym, VR is a Vietnamese
refugee and VM is a Vietnamese migrant.

H. Lan Thao Lamis a Vietnamese-Canadian artist based in New York. Her fourth
attempt to escape Vietnam was successful in 1980, the same year as her
sister’s eleventh attempt. Her mother’s second attempt succeeded in 1986.

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